A year ago today, Sydney emerged from its longest lockdown after the government lost control of the Delta outbreak more than 100 days earlier.
NSW residents still had to wear masks, check in and prove they were vaccinated to attend venues, were limited in the number of visitors they could have at home, had to isolate for a week if they had COVID-19, and children were still learning at home.
Now almost every restriction has been abandoned, with the exception of wearing masks in hospitals and aged care homes.
More than 3.44 million cases have been recorded in NSW in the first year of "COVID normal".
Simon Kozlina caught the virus from a family member on Christmas Day, though he had no symptoms.
“I became aware of it because I was doing RATs [rapid antigen tests] in order to go to other places and so I got the positive from there,” he said.
“Like others, I never got a PCR test at that time because the queues were too great and places were closed.”
By New Year's Day, more than 22,000 cases a day were recorded and the spike saw queues snaking around the block of testing clinics. Dozens were forced to close to cope with the demand.
NSW Health began accepting RATs as proof of infection on January 13.
To date, more than 1.5 million cases, nearly half of the total, have been confirmed by RATs.
Mr Kozlina caught COVID again in the second Omicron peak in March.
The virus hit him harder the second time.
“That was over a week off work, basically a week under the doona, on the couch, and I had all of the usual symptoms," he said.
"I had pain through everywhere, headaches, tiredness, brain fog, the whole range."
More than 40 per cent of the NSW population have had COVID in the past year, though under-reporting of positive results, and infections that don't cause symptoms, means the number is likely to be far higher.
However, ending lockdowns was never about the case numbers, as then-prime minister Scott Morrison warned in August 2021.
"We must adjust our mindset. Cases will not be the issue … dealing with serious illness, hospitalisation, ICU capabilities, our ability to respond in those circumstances, that will be our goal,” he said.
That goal has certainly been tested this year.
The number of people in hospital with the virus peaked in late January at just under 3,000.
There are now just under 1,000 people in hospital with COVID.
NSW Health noted in late February that some COVID-positive patients in hospital had been admitted for reasons other than the virus, potentially conflating them with people needing treatment for COVID.
Nonetheless, the escalating hospital numbers in January put hospitals and health workers under huge strain.
Non-urgent elective surgery was suspended for four weeks in January and February, causing record waiting times and the list to balloon to more than 100,000 people.
Ambulance response times for the most urgent cases were the longest they had been since reporting started in 2010.
Epidemiologist Alex Martiniuk from the University of Sydney said that while the broad community might say we are now in “COVID normal”, the healthcare system would say the current situation was not sustainable.
“Some parts of the health system, which obviously we’re heard of, aged care, disability, emergency and paramedics, are actually still experiencing a real challenge,” she said.
There have been 4,860 COVID-related deaths in NSW in the last 12 months, 10 times higher than the first 18 months of the pandemic (495).
About 40 COVID-related deaths were recorded in the last week.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that there were 13,524 more deaths this year (17 per cent) over the long-term baseline by the end of June.
Much harder to measure has been the impact on the mental health of the population.
Maree Teesson, a mental health researcher from the University of Sydney, said young people aged between 16 and 25, especially young women, had borne the brunt of the pandemic.
“Devastatingly, 40 per cent of 16 to 25 year-olds reported anxiety disorder, or depressive disorder or substance abuse disorder in the last 12 months, and that’s double the rates that we’re seeing 15 years ago,” she said.
Economic inequalities created by the pandemic particularly hit young Australians, she said, along with the effect of lockdowns.
Professor Martiniuk said everyone, but particularly healthcare workers, were tired after more than two years of the pandemic.
“People are very burnt out, really, reserves are low, in terms of dealing with any kind of hardship, and some people continuing to do it tough," she said.
World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu said in mid-September that weekly reported deaths had been the lowest since March 2020.
“We are not there yet but the end is in sight,” he said.
Professor Martiniuk said Australians should “applaud ourselves for having done the really hard yards” but warned the pandemic was not over yet.
“The reality is, and I’m not a doomsayer, but the reality is we could easily see a new variant that changes it all again,” she said.
